Redux: Python Things I Don't Like

Back in May of 2009, I wrote about Eight Things I don't like about Python. It was my attempt to come up with things I don't like about my programming language of choice. Consider this my update of that post.

1. Division sucks in Python

In Python 3 this is fixed so that 2 / 3 = 0.6666666666666666 but in Python 2.7.x you have 2 / 3 = 0. You can fix that in Python 2.7.x with doing a from __future__ import division before your division call. Can anyone tell me if a version of 2.7.x will natively support 2 / 3 = 0.6666666666666666 without that import?

Note: Chris Neugebauer pointed out that changing division in Python 2.7.x will break backwards compatibility. However that doesn't change that I don't like it in Python 2.7.x.

2. TKinter blows

Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. I either use command-line scripts or things delivered to the web. Also, thanks to Brett Cannon, I know if I need to make TKinter look good, I can use TK Themed Widgets right out of the standard library.

3. Lambdas make it easy to obfuscate code

I'm known for not liking lambdas in Python. These days, I do know of use cases for Lambdas, but those are far and few between. I might even try to turn that into a blog post this month - use cases for Lambdas in Python. Fortunately for me, these days I seem to work with people who mostly agree with me on this subject.

4. Sorting objects by attributes is annoying

This is still annoying for me. As I said, "... the snippet of code is trivial. Still, couldn't sorting objects by attributes or dictionaries by elements be made a bit easier? sort and sorted should have this built right in. I still have to look this up each and every time."

I've thought of proposing something easier as a PEP. Imagine that! Me submitting a PEP!

5. Regex should be a built-in function

Before I got to do Python full-time I was a go-to person with regular expressions. Languages without them were weak in my opinion. Since then (2006-ish) my skills have faded somewhat in regards to regular expressions. And you know what? It hasn't been a problem. Python's string functions are fast and useful, and when I really need regular expressions, I import the library and do some research. I'm considering this one closed.

6. Reload could be less annoying

Reload only works on modules. I want to be able to something like reload(my_module), reload(my_class), reload(my_function), or even reload(my_variable):

>>> from my_module import MyClass, my_function, my_variable
>>> mc = MyClass(my_variable)
>>> mc 
5
# I go change something in my_module.MyClass and save the file
>>> reload(MyClass) # reload just MyClass
>>> mc = MyClass(my_variable)
>>> mc 
10

My current fix is to use unittest as my shell as much as possible. And that is probably a good thing.

7. Help doesn't let me skip over the '__' methods

As I said way back when, "Python's introspection and documentation features makes me happy. And yet when I have to scroll past __and__, __or__, and __barf__ each time I type help(myobject), I get just a tiny bit cranky. I want help to accept an optional boolean that defaults to True. If you set it to False you skip anything with double underscores.

The See project is one solution to the issue. A different approach I've used is the Sphinx autodoc feature, but Sphinx is a lot of work and doesn't cover every contigency.

8. Not enough female Pythonistas

These days I know a lot of female Python developers. There is my own fiancee, Audrey Roy. Face-to-face I've met and talked to Christine Cheung, Jackie Kazil, Leah Culver, Katharine Jarmul, Katie Cunningham, Barbara Shaurette, Esther Nam, Sandy Strong, Sophia Viklund, Jessica Stanton Aurynn Shaw, Brenda Wallace, Jen Zajac, and many more I know I'm missing. And there are even more with whom I've had in-depth online conversations.

So why didn't I put a strike-through on this one? Because the numbers still aren't good enough. I know a lot of female Pythonistas, but how many do you know? And even if you know a decent number, what percentage of a meetup group you attend are women?

I can say that things are improving, but they could be better - for women or minorities. Find ways to pitch in, be it PyLadies events, PyStar workshops, or what have you.

One last note on this subject, I've heard some unsubstantiated statements that the .Net world has a higher female-to-male ration then the Open Source world. Are we going to take that kind of thing sitting down?

Loving the bunch class

Warning

This is me playing around with things in Python. It's not anything I use in real projects (except maybe the odd test). Please don't use these in anything important or you'll regret it.

Every play with a bunch class? I love 'em and make them protected or unprotected. I started using them early in my Python career, although it wasn't nearly about 2 years ago that I learned what they were called and the best way to code them. In any case, here is a simple, unprotected Bunch class.

# Simple unprotected Python bunch class
class Bunch(object):

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        self.__dict__.update(kwargs)

bunch = Bunch(name='Loving the bunch class')
print(bunch.name)

You can also make protected ones, that don't let pesky developers like me overwrite attributes, methods, and properties by accident:

# Simple protected Python bunch class
class ProtectedBunch(object):
    """ Use this when you don't want to overwrite existing methods and data """

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        for k, v in kwargs.items():
            if k not in self.__dict__:
                self.__dict__[k] = v

You can also write them to raise errors when a key is in self.__dict__. Or perhaps merely publish a warning. There are many ways to customize, but generally you want to keep these things as simple as possible. Anyway, let's get back to the main topic...

In the early days of my experiences with Python I found a small, nagging issue with dictionaries and objects. The notation wasn't as handy as what you got with JavaScript and some other languages I was using at the time. For example:

// JavaScript object notation
o = {};
o.name = 'Loving the bunch class';
o.name; // Calling with 'dot' notation
o['name']; // Calling with 'bracket' notation  

Unfortunately, in Python you can't do this with a normal bunch class:

# Python bunch class failing on bracket notation
class Bunch(object):

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        self.__dict__.update(kwargs)

bunch = Bunch(name='Loving the bunch class')
print(bunch.name)
print(bunch['name'])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'Bunch' object is not subscriptable

The quick answer is found with a little trick I found in the comments of a recipie by Alex Martelli that gives you the ability to do:

# Fancy dictionary/object trick
class Buncher(dict):
    """ Warning: DON'T USE THIS IN REAL PROJECTS """

    def __init__(self,**kw):
        dict.__init__(self,kw)
        self.__dict__.update(kw)

bunch = Bunch(name='Loving the bunch class')
print(bunch.name)
print(bunch['name'])

I'm not the only one who likes Bunch classes. On PyPI I found a really complete implementation.

Of course, in a lot of cases you probably don't want this 'weight of code', right? Dictionaries being lighter than full objects and all that. Nevertheless, it's fun for noodling and playing around with code. Still, I'm thinking it might be a fun little project to take a group of bunch implementations and do performance checks on them versus each other and dictionaries. Maybe the 'performance hit' isn't so bad.

I should also dig into things like defaultdict and other constructs to learn more. Part of the fun of any programming language is the depth of even the 'simplest' components of the language.